


Not Rare Enough

by accioslash



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accioslash/pseuds/accioslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A witch learns her son is a Squib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Rare Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Wizard Trauma community on LJ.

I first noticed something wasn't quite right on my son's fifth birthday. Well, if I'm honest with myself, I can admit that there had always been a persistent nagging fear in the back of my head that I couldn't _quite_ identify. But on my son's fifth birthday in a room full of laughing children and smiling, indulgent parents was the first time I could really see that my son wasn't like the other children.

Millicent Bulstrode, she's Millicent Macmillan now, told her daughter she couldn't have any more pumpkin juice. It would ruin her dinner and rot her teeth. But when Millicent turned her back, I noticed the previously empty cup was now full. It had not been charmed to automatically refill itself. Out of the corner of her eye, Millicent noticed the cup, too. Millicent said nothing; she merely beamed. At the time, her daughter was not yet two.

When my son was nine, the school he attended took pictures of all the children. They were to be displayed in the trophy case in the main hall. A few days before the pictures were to be taken several of the boys and even one of the girls shaved off part of their hair with a Muggle razor that belonged to one of their grandparents. Madame Brocklehurst was furious. And one by one before the day was out, each child again had a perfect head of hair. Unless you count the younger Potter boy who was unlucky enough to inherit his father's messy black rat's nest. But everyone was back to normal. Everyone except my son. His father wouldn't allow me to spell it back. He believed that if our son was embarrassed enough his hair would grow out just like the other children's had done. If you look in the display case today, you will see a picture of an unsmiling boy with long blond hair on only one side.

For years I have been waiting for him to make things happen. Perhaps he would summon a favorite toy I had hidden because he had misbehaved. Or maybe the lights in his bedroom would snap on suddenly after he had a particularly disturbing dream. Or possibly when the other children teased him he would be able to make something happen to one of them. Nothing terrible. Just...something.

But nothing ever happened.

My son will turn eleven tomorrow. The age when all his classmates eagerly await a Hogwarts letter that I now know will never come for my son. There will be no trip to Diagon Alley for his first wand, no fervent pleas for new racing brooms and no house rivalries to contend with. I will not have to cross my fingers and hope that he doesn't get sorted into Hufflepuff and that Professor Trelawney has finally retired. There will be no OWLS, no NEWTS, no exciting future filled with endless possibilities. He will never be the Minister for Magic, perform groundbreaking research as a prominent Healer at St Mungo's, or be a star Seeker at the Quidditch World Cup.

I listen as the clock strikes midnight and watch as my son's name slowly fades from the Malfoy family tapestry. "Squibs are rare; magic is a dominant and resilient gene,*" my mother-in-law had said to me all those years ago on my son's fifth birthday. I laugh humorlessly. Apparently, they aren't rare enough.

**Author's Note:**

> *Taken directly from an interview with J. K. Rowling.


End file.
